Felix Culpa: The Problems of Evil and (Non-)Duality in Suffering-Abolitionism

"O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer." - The Exsultet

January 14, 2022

"Mitigating cosmic indifference by shaking the Gods out of their apathy towards us. How? By humans showing as much compassion to lower-order beings like animals as what you would hope a God would demonstrate towards humans in similar times of need."

     We can answer the problem of “why does evil and suffering exist or are allowed to exist if there is a God?”. We can answer this in multiple ways. ‘Felix culpa’, for one. The one I favour the most is simply because for the exact same reasons plenty of humans who are kind-hearted and compassionate can only save a few animals at a time, one place at a time. Kind and loving humans cannot unfortunately be everywhere all at once to deliver all lower-order beings from suffering, and neither can loving gods erase all the suffering and evil bringing great misery to us humans. As powerful and as loving as they can be, even they are not powerful enough to be omnipresent and omniscient; they are ‘simply’ higher-order beings themselves as far as humans are concerned. Perhaps, in a Voltaire-esque fashion, no divinity is naturally powerful enough to be all-knowing and all-encompassing, thus it would be necessary to evolve and reinvent ourselves (and others?) into a climactic omnipresent omniscience. Whether we actually COULD is a different matter! It is interesting to note all the many different ways humans interact with animals, insects, so on, and how the presence of humans, human societies, constructs and artificialities, interact with said insects and animals in a myriad of different ways and in near-infinite fashion: for example, a baby animal lost from its mother's nest found and whisked away by people who find it and care for it. Like the gods above us, only humans can do so much to help despite how miraculous such actions would appear to other such animals. Along these lines of thought, let’s imagine how gods, aliens, so on, interact with humans in ways analogous to how humans interact with animals. Disappearances, unexplainable events, abductions (and safe returns!), UFOs, and so on. But even a cosmic Good Samaritan might not be powerful enough to return a human in need to its original time and place after caring for them, just like how a human would struggle to identify exactly which nest a baby bird fell out of after nursing it back to health, nor would it easily determine which fully-grown bird is the parent out looking for it. I am sure many cosmic Good Samaritans said, “to hell with the prime directive, this human needs our help!”.

     Similar to the above paragraph, we can also answer, at least in part, the riddle of why higher-order beings (divinities, aliens, spirits) are so ‘quiet’, and why the Fermi paradox seems unresolved. Again, for similar reasons why humans communicate with animals and insects so infrequently, and vice versa. And when communication is somewhat semi-successful between life separated by different orders, it is usually low-resolution communication, and in both directions. We can play with a dog by throwing a stick for it to fetch, and the dog can notify you when it’s hungry and wants to bed fed; but a human cannot (yet) read The Bible to a dog in terms that it can understand, nor can the dog vocalise more nuanced problems and causes of discomfort in times of need that may require specialised attention, which can leave a person guessing: a thorn in his paw? Stomach ache? Lost his favourite toy? Doesn’t want to be put down? These all require high-resolution communication.

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January 15, 2022

     Non-duality troubles me, as I am highly invested in clear dichotomies. I am very confident with what is good, as well as what is bad; what is kind, and what is evil. I do not have trouble conceptualising it, I understand nondualism and I ‘get it’, but I think in a universe of non-duality, it would be necessary to ‘invent’ duality, to again paraphrase Voltaire. Non-dualism troubles me morally and ethically I mean, not conceptually or intellectually. However, now I find myself troubled with dualism. As a lover of “The Good Guys”, that which is good and beautiful, that which the white side of YinYang represents, I find the concept of ‘balance’, ‘opposites’ also troubling. I look at YinYang and think to myself, I am not comfortable seeing just as much evil and suffering as there is goodness and compassion. Even in balance and symmetry, there is still too much suffering, too much work to be done; if we balance good and evil on a pair of scales and they are both in perfect balance, that tells me that there is still far too much evil, and keeping this balance risks being a cop-out. So that stimulates my imagination to imagine the abolition of suffering across the whole of the multiverse, which I can confidently say is impossible. However, let’s imagine far future technology that could grant its users the ability to achieve even impossible tasks riddled with paradoxes…

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January 19, 2022

     Felix Culpa! The problem of Evil! A God can be loving and caring of His humans and still allow Evil to exist (perhaps out of some ineffable necessity unknown to us), just like how, in a similar way, a farmer can love and care for a chicken, but still be required to kill it to feed him and his family.

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January 21, 2022

     I like the idea of the two opposing forces, black and white, good and evil, whatever, having a shared and mutual enjoyment of the thrill of the challenge, the fight, thus have a begrudging respect and gratitude for the existence of each ones opponent, as well as gratitude for existing themselves to be able to experience something so incredible; the experience of standing in front of your opponent, face to face, winner takes all. Like Moriarty and Holmes, or two chess grandmasters. Although it could be argued that Holmes and Moriarty and the two chess grandmasters both fit (I mean, where all four of them fit) into the white side of the YinYang, representing order, intelligence, mastery, civilised manners, so on, and that other Lightsiders would not want to lower themselves to the levels of some of those in the Black side (low enough to be equal to the Blackside, for those of the Light were superior to begin with, arguably), if the Black is reserved for those that harm children, animals, exploit the vulnerable and destroy souls; people who are not worthy of that aforementioned respect and gratitude, mutual or otherwise, basically. Nor are such evildoers capable of imparting such respect onto those who do Good because evil has twisted them too much.


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January 24, 2022

Quasi-Socratic: I know nothing, except that I suffer. I know nothing, except knowing that I suffer.

Quasi-Descartean: I suffer, therefore I am; I am, therefore I think; I think, therefore I suffer; I suffer, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am; I am, therefore I suffer; I suffer, therefore I suffer; I suffer, therefore I suffer, therefore I suffer, therefore I suffer, therefore I suffer, therefore I suffer, therefore…

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January 25, 2022

     If God's wisdom thought it necessary to include evil within creation, then some extreme religious fanatics could feel divinely sanctioned to commit evil acts if they believe they are doing God's work, or indeed, God's 'dirty' work that no other religious devotees would dare approach. If they believe that the existence of evil creates more total good in this universe than however much total good would be produced in a universe where evil never existed at all (thought to be one of the reasons God allowed evil to exist in the first place), then these religious fanatics who commit evil acts could convince themselves that what they are doing is in fact good; or, good with extra steps!

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                                                                           Evil exists simply so that you can do good by fighting it. #FelixCulpa